Desperately Seeking Synergy. The pursuit of synergy pervades the management of most large companies. Meetings and retreats are held to brainstorm about ways to collaborate more effectively. Cross business teams are set up to develop key account plans, coordinate product development, and disseminate best practices. Incentives for sharing knowledge, leads, and customers are built into complex compensation schemes. Processes and procedures are standardized. Organizational structures are reshuffled to accommodate new, cross unit managerial positions. What emerges from all this activityIn our years of research into corporate synergy, we have found that synergy initiatives often fall short of managements expectations. Some never get beyond a few perfunctory meetings. Others generate a quick burst of activity and then slowly peter out. Others become permanent corporate fixtures without ever fulfilling their original goals. If the only drawbacks to such efforts were frustration and embarrassment, they might be viewed benignly as learning experiences. But the pursuit of synergy often represents a major opportunity cost as well. It distracts managers attention from the nuts and bolts of their businesses, and it crowds out other initiatives that might generate real benefits. Sometimes, the synergy programs actually backfire, eroding customer relationships, damaging brands, or undermining employee morale. Easily manage the Citrix portfolio of products from the cloud. Simplify control of your apps, desktops, content, devices and network. Explore Citrix Cloud services. Simply put, many synergy efforts end up destroying value rather than creating it. The pursuit of synergy often distracts managers attention from the nuts and bolts of their businesses. Avoiding such failures is possible, but it requires a whole new way of looking at and thinking about synergy. 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Shah Rukh Khan, Kirti Kulhari, Ashutosh Gowariker, Govinda. Synergy Medical Weight Loss Does It Work Health Systems Weight Loss Duluth Mn Best Weight Loss Video Program. The pursuit of synergy pervades the management of most large companies. Meetings and retreats are held to brainstorm about ways to collaborate more effectively. Rather than assuming that synergy exists, can be achieved, and will be beneficial, corporate executives need to take a more balanced, even skeptical view. They need to counter synergys natural allure by subjecting their instincts to rigorous evaluation. Such an approach will help executives avoid wasting precious resources on synergy programs that are unlikely to succeed. Perhaps even more important, it will enable them to better understand where the true synergy opportunities lie in their organizations. See the insert What Is Synergy We believe that synergy can provide a big boost to the bottom line of most large companies. The challenge is to separate the real opportunities from the illusions. With a more disciplined approach, executives can realize greater value from synergyeven while pursuing fewer initiatives. Four Managerial Biases When a synergy program founders, it is usually the business units that take the blame. Corporate executives chalk the failure up to line managers recalcitrance or incompetence. We have found, however, that the blame is frequently misplaced. The true cause more often lies in the thinking of the corporate executives themselves. Because executives view the achievement of synergy as central to their jobs, they are prone to four biases that distort their thinking. First comes the synergy bias, which leads them to overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs of synergy. Then comes the parenting bias, a belief that synergy will only be captured by cajoling or compelling the business units to cooperate. The parenting bias is usually accompanied by the skills biasthe assumption that whatever know how is required to achieve synergy will be available within the organization. Finally, executives fall victim to the upside bias, which causes them to concentrate so hard on the potential benefits of synergy that they overlook the downsides. In combination, these four biases make synergy seem more attractive and more easily achievable than it truly is. Program Stok Barang Dengan Excel there. Synergy Bias. Most corporate executives, whether or not they have any special insight into synergy opportunities or aptitude for nurturing collaboration, feel they ought to be creating synergy. The achievement of synergy among their businesses is inextricably linked to their sense of their work and their worth. In part, the synergy bias reflects executives need to justify the existence of their corporation, particularly to investors. If we cant find opportunities for synergy, theres no point to the group, one chief executive explained to us. In part, it reflects their desire to make the different businesses feel that they are part of a single family. My job is to create a familya group of managers who see themselves as members of one team, commented another CEO. Perhaps most fundamentally, it reflects executives real fear that they would be left without a role if they were not able to promote coordination, standardization, and other links among the various businesses they control. The synergy bias becomes an obsession for some executives. Desperately seeking synergy, they make unwise decisions and investments. In one international food company that we studiedwell call it Worldwide Foodsa newly appointed chief executive fell victim to such an obsession. Seeing that the companys various national units operated autonomously, sharing few ideas across borders, he became convinced that the key to higher corporate profitsand a higher stock pricelay in greater interunit cooperation. The creation of synergy became his top priority, and he quickly appointed global category managers to coordinate each of Worldwide Foods main product lines. Their brief was to promote collaboration and standardization across countries in order to leverage the companys brands internationally. Pressured by the CEO, the category managers launched a succession of high profile synergy initiatives. The results were dismal. A leading U. K. cookie brand was launched with considerable expense in the United States. It promptly flopped. A pasta promotion that had worked well in Germany was rolled out in Italy and Spain. It backfired, eroding both margins and market shares. An attempt was made to standardize ingredients across Europe for some confectionery products in order to achieve economies of scale in purchasing and manufacturing. Consumers balked at buying the reformulated products. Rather than encouraging interunit cooperation, the initiatives ended up discouraging it. As the failures mounted, the management teams in each country became more convinced than ever that their local markets were unique, requiring different products and marketing programs. After a year of largely fruitless efforts, with few tangible benefits and a significant deterioration in the relationship between the corporate center and the units, the chief executive began to retreat, curtailing the synergy initiatives. A similar problem arose in a professional services firm. Created through a series of acquisitions, this firm had three consulting practicesorganization development, employee benefits, and corporate strategyas well as an executive search business. The chief executive believed that in order to justify the acquisitions, he needed to impose a one firm policy on the four units. The centerpiece of this policy was the adoption of a coordinated approach to key accounts. A client service manager was assigned to each major client and given responsibility for managing the overall relationship and for cross selling the firms various services. The approach proved disastrous. The chief executives enthusiasm for the one firm policy blinded him to the realities of the marketplace.